Dark August 1976

Sal Devito J.J. Barry, a visual artist from New York City, has spent a year trying to adjust to country life after moving to rural Stowe, Vermont, with his girlfriend Jackie Carolyne Barry. The quiet of the small town is shattered by a car accident Sal was involved in just after arriving, which claimed the life of a young girl. Although Sal is cleared of any wrongdoing, the girl’s grandfather, Ned McDermott William Robertson, seems to be watching and following him, casting a shadow over the newly settled life. Unsettling physical symptoms begin to plague Sal, growing more painful and persistent as days pass, and at one moment he nearly collapses in a grocery store, fueling his growing fear that McDermott may have laid a curse upon him.

As Sal focuses on building his art studio with his friend Paul Richard Allan Fay, a hooded figure appears in the woods, distracting Sal enough to cause Paul to injure his leg. The two set out to drive Paul to the hospital, but another sighting of the hooded figure on a covered bridge leads to a car crash instead. By the time they reach the hospital, Sal is visibly shaken, and the sense that something otherworldly is at work lingers over him.

Later, Sal and Jackie share a meal with their friends Theo Frank Bongiorno and Lesley Kate McKeown. Lesley, a clairvoyant, offers Sal a tarot reading that foreshadows danger but also suggests that a woman unknown to him will come to his aid. Meanwhile, Jackie confides that Adrianna Putnam, Kim Hunter, a local psychic who many townspeople dismiss as a witch, might be able to help Sal. Sal finds himself wandering back to the woods where the hooded figure first appeared, following it across a creek into the trees, but the figure remains silent and unmoving despite his calls.

With mounting fear, Sal, Jackie, Theo, and Lesley decide to seek Adrianna’s guidance. Adrianna confirms Sal’s suspicion that McDermott has placed a curse on him and advises a drastic ritual: Sal should burn his unfinished studio—the first place where he encountered the ominous figure—because the place feels demonic. Sal follows the advice and sets the studio alight, but the local fire department intervenes to extinguish the blaze, and Sal later finds himself arrested when he tries to resist the responders.

In a desperate bid to lift the curse, Jackie goes to Ned McDermott to plead for mercy. Inside his home she uncovers tools and items pointing to witchcraft, and McDermott assaults her; she escapes and seeks Adrianna’s aid once more. Adrianna instructs Jackie to bring Sal back to her house, along with Theo and Lesley, so they can participate in a ritual designed to transform the negative energy attached to Sal into something positive. The four drink from a goblet and begin an incantation, with Adrianna leading the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. But the ritual is cut short when McDermott arrives and shoots Adrianna, killing her in the heart of the ritual.

Even with Adrianna slain, the ritual scene continues, and the demonic force that had possessed Sal now turns on McDermott, signaling a supernatural shift in the town’s uneasy dynamic. Sometime later, Sal again spots the hooded figure at the woods behind his home. Resolve drives him to confront the figure with a shotgun, yet danger looms closer as his dog senses trouble and lunges at him. In a doomed moment of self-preservation, Sal shoots his dog to protect himself, collapses, and stays by his dying companion as he comforts the animal in his arms, the weight of the ordeal lingering in the air around him.